


The Downward Spiral

by Cyrelia_J



Series: One for A Hundred [2]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Dark, Drama, Dubious Ethics, Dubious Morality, Extremely Dubious Consent, Hypnotism, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Mind Manipulation, Non-Consensual Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-05-27
Packaged: 2019-05-14 07:25:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14765186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cyrelia_J/pseuds/Cyrelia_J
Summary: Sequel to "If--"Kelas Parmak knows that meeting with Enabran Tain will likely only result in his death but it’s a chance that he has to take. He has no intention of working for the Order and he has one gamble for escape. He has no idea who he’s up against.“The Glinn can raise morale, the Gul can raise strength, the Legate can raise armies… but do you know what the Doctor can raise?” Parmak asks that, fearless in the face of death, knowing surely that’s what he’s seeing, damned if he’ll ever give Tain an inch. Doctor Parmak always told him that it would be his undoing not to show fear at the proper time. He’d always apologized but respectfully submitted that he didn’t have any left in him.“Tell me, Doctor,” Tain encourages with a look over his glass that Parmak doesn’t understand.“The Doctor,” he answers with another drink, “can raise the dead.”





	The Downward Spiral

**Author's Note:**

> So I've been having fun with this sort of alternate version of Parmak and here I'm happy to sort of fill in and answer the some of the little things appearing at the end of "If--". I call this Parmak C132 (bit of a R&M tribute in the designation) and you can check the link for more detail on that decision on the series page.
> 
> Thanks all for reading and I'm way appreciative of everyone who likes reading my alternate version of things and far out ideas :)

The invitation remains on his dining room table. The serum has been filled in the small envelope sewn hastily into the pad of his thumb. Parmak takes a deep breath, smiling nicely for the handsome woman who greets him at the door.

 

It’s time for him to meet Enabran Tain.

 

The parlor isn’t the darkly lit affair that Parmak would have envisioned. It’s warm, both in temperature and lighting. The chairs are soft. The kanar is sweet and thick, syrupy over snow in the glass. It chills his tongue when it finally reaches. It’s pleasant. He drinks it slowly to savor it while the man sitting across the table in the parlor watches him. Parmak thinks it’s a pleasant way to pass his last evening. He doesn’t imagine that he’ll be alive tomorrow. His chances of success are minimal at best. He has no intention of accepting anything that the head of the Obsidian Order proposes. He made that obvious when he arrived wearing every bead in his hair in a rare tribute to the dead he’ll be joining soon.

He’s wearing his sandals and multi pocketed pants. The loose, sleeveless tunic was a gift from his foster father, the late Vakem Parmak. So it falls to him to be the only Doctor Parmak for however long that may last. He imagines it will suit him to greet the old man in the underworld looking as he was best remembered. He remembers when it was gifted to him it was with the understanding that he would be wearing it over something more modest. Doctor Parmak had said that with a knowing grin and Parmak usually wore it when he wanted to create a certain defiant impression. That’s what he is tonight. He’s heard the stories from his colleagues. The Order is a generous but domineering and hard master. It isn’t a master that he intends to submit to.

 

Tain watches him with a placid smile that’s chilling.

 

“Interesting,” he remarks when Parmak sets the glass down empty. “You drank all of it without suspicion.” He takes a drink of his own, long and deep, matching him, and Parmak notes the ring on his last finger. He imagines it must be a poison ring. He finds that funny because it isn’t  _Tain_  who slipped something into the carafe but- “You’re either as trusting as the reports make you out to be, or a fool.”

“You wouldn’t have invited me here if I was a fool,” Parmak answers taking more of the cold ice slush from the metal cylinder, carefully scooping it into the glasses for both of them. He pours the kanar slowly watching it with a contented little sigh. “Mmm... I would have expected better from the head of the Order though. If there’s ah, a file on me that is because while it’s certainly not common knowledge, Doctor Parmak had always suspected that there were always eyes watching the house so then with that knowledge, those eyes, those ears you’d know that I can’t be poisoned. Ah, right, I’m sorry, that was likely appropriating something dramatic that you were going to say. We can pretend I didn’t say that then. I’m afraid I’m not very good at this.”

“I think we can both agree, doctor, that we both know everything that there is to know about you. Therefore speaking those mutual understandings would be a vulgar habit to have.” Parmak looks at him with a smile, a tilt of his head. Of course, but then Tain feigned ignorance anyway as an amusing conversation starter. The obvious rejoinder of course is that Parmak is full of vulgar habits. It’s quite well known. Yet to speak such a thing would be to bear truth to that same vulgar habit and it is  _also_  a mutual understanding that Kelas Parmak is incredibly proud and defensive of misperceptions of his “poor Nokaran heritage”. He laughs softly and pushes his glasses back up on his face, taking another drink. He was right to count on Tain’s ego.

“Mmm, but I can’t assume that you know everything about me because you’d surely know as I already rejected your initial offer to work for you that this would be pointless. I wouldn’t think you’d threaten me then either.... given what you know.” That being the years of training that Doctor Parmak had subjected him to so that such things could never be used against him. He rather likes the pain now.

He looks at Enabran Tain, still seeing that beatific expression on his face as he continues watching him. There’s a low laugh as Tain shakes his head.

“The State is our beloved Mother,” he says parroting one of Parmak’s often quoted declarations. “That’s what you would say Doctor and you would say a mother should pull with love. And what does a mother want most for her children?”

“To survive,” Parmak answers immediately, knowing his own words when they’re being recited to him. He smiles still as the Kanar sours on his tongue. “I feel like we’re in one of those plays by Morat... Ah, right, those are productions likely not to your tastes. That was too esoteric of me I’m afraid and that wasn’t my intention. I just wanted to point out that we already know what the other is going to say so I didn’t see much point. But I ah... do enjoy the kanar so you can keep talking to me,” he says, that warmth starting to spread through him nicely. This will be a good death as the Klingons would say though they likely wouldn’t think it so.

 

He has no idea if his gamble is going to pay off.

 

“Doctor Parmak once told me that the most important piece on the Kotra board is the Doctor, you know. Mmm, I never won a single game against him and he said I just didn’t have the head for it but I’ve never seen anyone beat him in Kotra either so maybe that’s not just because of my ah… lacking something. Sometimes he’d have the entire board left depending on who he was playing against. Sometimes it was just the Doctor. I never quite understood that you know but it made sense after a while.” Parmak’s voice is softer, more introspective as he looks across the table and wonders what it must be like to have this man for a father. It makes him feel ill and he’s thankful to the Ancients that no one needs to suffer that penance.

“The Doctor?” Tain asks looking amused. It pleases Parmak that this is something he doesn’t know and he leans forward a bit as he takes another drink. His drinking is continuing to encourage Tain’s.

“The Glinn can raise morale, the Gul can raise strength, the Legate can raise armies... but do you know what the Doctor can raise?” Parmak asks that, fearless in the face of death, knowing surely that’s what he’s seeing, damned if he’ll ever give Tain an inch. Doctor Parmak always told him that it would be his undoing not to show fear at the proper time. He’d always apologized but respectfully submitted that he didn’t have any left in him.

“Tell me, Doctor,” Tain encourages with a look over his glass that Parmak doesn’t understand.

“The Doctor,” he answers with another drink, “can raise the dead.” Parmak sets it down a bit harder than he intended, that warmth a nice comfort. “It doesn’t matter who else dies,” Parmak says with a dart of his eyes to the floor. “The Doctor has to survive. But that’s ah... that’s not arrogance. It’s burdensome you know? That’s what Doctor Parmak told me. The Doctor has to be able to walk through fire, has to be able to bear more pain than any other man on the battlefield, has to be able to stay alive to work, to heal, to perform miracles and call the fallen back from the dark world to fight. It’s a curse that those who serve the State bear happily.”

“A noble sentiment,” Tain agrees sitting back again, regarding Parmak with a strange sort of speculation. “And yet knowing this you agreed to come, knowing that you were walking into death, knowing that with the work you’ve yet to do you chose to walk directly into the pit as they would say.”

“I’m nothing. I’m not important. I ah... know that sounds arrogant what I said earlier but I’m not that doctor. I’m nobody. You don’t need me. There is nothing special that I do.” Tain’s smile grows wider when Parmak says that to him. He speaks softly, deliberately, and for a moment he almost thinks that it will be enough, praying that suggestion will work. He relaxes just a little when Tain doesn’t immediately respond and lets his eyes fall closes for one foolish moment of relief. They snap back open the moment that Tain speaks again.

“I felt a compulsion to believe you,” Tain informs him and again there’s that strange expression from before. “That was nice. I may be able to use that later, but that isn’t the use that I have in mind for you.”

 

Tain takes another long drink deliberately and that’s when Parmak realizes that he knows the game.

 

He pushes his glasses up with a little huff of breath that’s sort of like a laugh. Parmak is breathing hard with a sort of... excitement. There’s a rush as the look passes between them and he knows that Tain knows exactly what it is that he’s done. Parmak laughs softly smiling at him. This is the reason that Tain wanted him for the Order after all, on full display and in spite of his protests, he’s given it away; exactly what value he holds to them. The drug that he’d slipped into the carafe was something that he’d prepared specially for this evening. He’d never tried it before, but he was one of the leading drug synthesizers in the entire Empire and the serums that he was able to produce like alchemy was something that was coveted by many around him. It was a skill that he worked hard to develop, knowing that for one to combat disease, one needed to be intimately familiar with the mutations of viruses, bacteria, bacteriophages.

They could change generations in days and Parmak studied their patterns, studied his own chemicals, herbs, took numerous rods of notes and then burned them after committing them to memory with a devotion bordering on fanaticism. They often likened him to a machine and though he had little appreciation for beauty and art, he was the mythical creature in the basement who could make magic within hours. The serum was a simple one, and with the base data that he was able to read from the Records Bureau he could parse the likely lies of Tain’s biological profile, extrapolate from his own observations, and concoct the formulation with the highest probability of affecting that suggestive mind. It was a risk. Tain was right, Parmak wasn’t eager to rush into death. He’d prepared for it of course, and he didn’t fear it, but Doctor Parmak’s first commandment held high in his mind above all others: survive.

It almost worked too. He’s careful to keep smiling as Tain takes another drink and asks him coyly what else he might suggest to him. Parmak considers it a moment and nearly hesitates but this is a bizarre dangerous thrill that he’s never experienced before.  _Is this what it’s like to be afraid? To feel alive?_

“I ah... might suggest that you consider another should I make a recommendation. There are my colleagues of course who should cover this position you know. I’m... Mmm this Northerner...this...” Parmak smiles brighter. “You know this ah pitiful Nokaran thing couldn’t possibly please you,” he says, his pride stinging at that as he makes the gamble, changing the cadence of his voice wondering if there might not be a sympathetic aural component he could throw everything behind. He watches Tain consider again and this time there’s a sweep of his eyes over Parmak’s body that’s unmistakable. He doesn't understand it.

“Your mind pleases me greatly, Doctor Parmak,” Tain says and it makes Parmak take another drink. The serum won’t affect him as greatly. It’s too different. Tain is a hatcher, he’s male, he’s Y001M standard on the Ba’zan spectrum classification and the serum accounted for those differences. It won’t affect Parmak quite the same. Even without testing it he can know that fairly certainly. But that doesn’t mean that enough of it won’t…

“There are other minds,” Parmak says. “You don’t want mine. It’s not ahh… in accord with your desires, I assure you. It’s quite different. You should know that. You’ve read the pieces that I’ve published. They’re not artful or eloquent but they’re true. The darkness obscures the truth but the sky illuminates it. That’s Iloja of Prim. I see the books. They’re very neatly arranged.” He drinks again with a shiver at that blissful familiar cold. These southern houses always get too warm for him and Tain’s parlor is no different.

Enabran Tain has dark eyes that watch him like a dragon watching the sleeping tol’jath.  _The darkness obscures the truth._  He wonders if there’s any truth in those eyes as he stares into them with another drink and... Oh... it’s empty again and so is Tain’s. He scents the kanar but nothing passes his lips. A pity. This must be the end of it then since there’s only enough in the carafe for one of them. He should leave it to Tain because if he can get him to drink enough of it he still might be able to-

“How close are you?” Tain asks him, forcing a blink out of the reverie.

“I’m sorry, my attention wandered a moment. I don’t imagine you’re used to that but ah... one of the perils of having my services I’ve been told. I’m close? To... giving you an answer? To finishing the kanar? Quite close and ha... would you believe that I don’t have much of a head for it. There’s an irony to be found somewhere. Irony was another good theme of Morat’s latest work... Mmm the irony of the order of the... Order I think,” he says to himself. “Oh right, you wouldn’t have seen it.”

“To the contrary, Doctor Parmak, I’ve become quite familiar with his work.”

“Oh dear... I thought he escaped you devils.”

“No one escapes the fire. Not even the doctors who walk through it.”

“You’re not the fire, you’re the darkness.”

“We are the legendary black flames that devour everything, Doctor Parmak, including fire itself-”

“Until nothing remains but the ashes to grow new life,” Parmak finishes, setting the glass down.

If he’s going to die he’s going to finish the kanar and die with his belly full of Tain’s mot expensive gift, he decides. He pours the last of it, the slush in that cylinder still perfectly little crystalline ice. He slips a few fingers of it past his lips. Again he meets Tain defiantly finding that strange smile growing wider, those dark eyes still watching him.

“How close are you to the advanced Yarinja vaccine?” Tain asks, a playful circling of fingers around the rim of his half drunken glass. Parmak takes a long bitter drink thinking as he does that he could’ve sworn Tain’s glass was empty before.

“Not close enough by half. It’s a Northerner’s problem. That’s what they say. It’s better to have less resources going to feed the steppe. Why are we wasting our cloning research to keep the scaly zabo up there in meat. Ah, right, mutual knowledge vulgarity,” Parmak mumbles into the glass. Tain knows and however little care Parmak’s colleagues at the Research Board have, Tain likely has a tenth of it.

“One for a hundred, I believe was what Vakem Parmak used to say if I’m not mistaken.”

“You’re never mistaken. You’re Enabran Tain and when you’re mistaken you’re not the one who bears the weight of that mistake,” He mumbles into the glass again, holding his eyes shut longer, a sigh following. He doesn’t understand why the Southerners insist on loving the heat as they do.

“My ears are old, doctor, you’re either going to have to speak up or join me here if you insist on mumbling into your cups.”

“The carotid artery will be best if you’re going to stab me,” Parmak says as he stands unsteadily. He nearly trips on the rug and leans over the table between them. he makes himself walk more slowly, more deliberately, sitting down beside Tain. He feels small seated next to him. “It’s here,” Parmak says bearing his throat drawing a line. “A slash like this is good. Kidneys if you want it to hurt but I’m afraid I won’t scream for you. I might like it actually. Ah, that’s the pity of it really.”

Parmak doesn’t know why he said that to him. He blinks a few times and looks down at the table. He looks at Tain’s hands. They’re large. They easily dwarf the delicate glass. He supposes they hurt when they strike. He smiles somewhat stupidly at that.

“One for a hundred... that’s right. That’s our family oath and you’ll see it on the doctor’s vault along with the rest. “For every life we take, we shall save a hundred.” That’s how we should live, Kelas my son,” Parmak says with another slow drink. He looks over the glass at Tain. Was he the one who sat this close to him? Tain is warm. his presence engulfs everything. He’s the embodiment of the shadows in that moment. Parmak’s heart races faster as he asks. “How may will my skills kill for you?” He asks, tongue languishing around the rim of the glass.

“How many will the completed vaccine save?”

“Hundreds of thousands if not millions,” Parmak recites, having given the answer over and over before the boards until he was hoarse. “But that’s not going to happen. I’m going to refuse you. You’re going to kill me and that’s...” He looks at Tain’s hand on his shoulder. It looks as big on his shoulder as it did on the glass. His hand is soft like a killer’s. It bears down the weight of the world on him. It’s a gravity well and it drags his head to it leaden and dead and... Tain’s hand is cradling the side of his face.

“I’m not going to kill you,” Tain says with that assured line appearing on his mouth. “You and I are going to save Cardassia, Doctor Parmak. Millions saved, thousands cleansed.”

“You make murder sound clinically pretty. It’s revolting.” He takes another drink but nearly stops, wondering what it is he’s doing. “Your ideas sicken me when I read your missives and you are... a greatest monster than anything I may look like.”

“And yet here you sit almost on my lap, wanting me.”

“What?”

“It’s obvious, Doctor. Seduction the last tool of a Nokaran whore to save his miserable life.”

“I wasn’t going to...” Why would he? No, that’s foolish he was going to die here. He’s going to die here and-

Tain’s hand falls over his tipping more of it down his throat, spilling some from his lips. down his neck.

“Too much recklessly imbibing kanar and your own foolish drug,” he hears Tain say to him as he swallows. He thinks some of it might have hit Tain’s palm.

“I... want you?” He asks softly, licking he kanar from Tain’s fingers. Tain holds them out while he follows.

“You’re practically on top of me Doctor,” Tain answers calmly, pulling his hand back. Parmak looks at him, pushing his glasses back up.

“I am... Mmm I don’t know why I would do that. This body doesn’t seduce things. This body is for science, not for-”

“Look at me, Doctor,” he hears and he looks at him again, into those eyes, thinking that Tain has a commanding presence and a very... soft mouth. “One for a hundred,” he repeats and Parmak notices his finger raised, drawing back and forth and he tries to watch Tain but his eyes catch and and he follows it even as the room swirls.

“Right, one for a hundred. Your eyes are... like the dead... I hadn’t realized before but it’s like... the souls of the damned reaching out.”

“One for a hundred, doctor.”

“Yes, yes of course ummm... Why am I moving?” Tain’s mouth moves again, his lips cruel, soft, mouth wide and Parmak has a vision of his head twisting to a giant snake’s, jaw unhinged, the darkness devouring him, tight, suffocating, his head moving forward into it. He tries to blink it away but it... remains along with the haze that begins at the corner of his vision. He tries again to blink it gone but it persists, the cataracts floating, that haze growing stronger. Parmak feels dizzy and he knows that this is beyond the side effect of his own solution.

“You were wrong, Doctor. You are very much in accordance with what I desire.” Those eyes turn yellow, pupils slit like a cobra’s, a great hooded thing towering above him. It speaks with Tain’s voice. He knows it isn’t real. For the moment he knows that this is in his head but he doesn’t know how to make it stop. He feels heavy like the dead; his body wants to sleep.

“You don’t...”  _“desire me”_  dies on his lips and somewhere he hears a glass drop and a chime and a ting ting ting of a clock. He blinks again and the haze is gone. There’s something that isn’t right but-

It’s interrupted by the snake slithering its heavy scaly body around him until he struggles to breathe. It hurts. The pain makes him hotter and that snake twists and twines until he feels the undulation of scales writing around him. He opens his mouth but there’s a flick of that snake’s tongue inside and he realizes that it can read his thoughts. He doesn’t need to speak. The snake speaks to him softly inside his mind and he relaxes into the grip as it wraps and wraps. His mouth is full...and out of habit he tries to reach for his spectacles to adjust them but can’t seem to reach his face.

“One for a hundred,” the snake hisses at him. Parmak agrees and when he does a dozen smaller serpents twining around his arms and legs borne out of the sofa, the shadows of the room maybe? He agrees again silently as the snakes move as one leaving him naked, breathless, laying on the sofa as they encircle his wrists binding them, binding his ankles, his throat, squeezing until his glasses fall off. The room is a swim of beige and gray scales that shake madly without the spectacles to keep his eyes focused.

_“Please...”_  he doesn’t know where that thought comes from as the snake opens him up.  _“Please...”_  he says again not knowing what the snake wants as those bonds get tighter, making the blood pulse in his hands and feet until it hurts and he screams. Or at least he tries, the little snake around his neck drawing tighter again.

“Who do you serve?” the hooded cobra flicks at him, that tongue licking fire up his body. The fire burns like nothing he’s ever felt and it’s the most wonderful torture. Parmak feels himself sinking down into the floor, into that abyss as the darkness changes the world to nothing but inky shadows swimming around him, his lungs feeling like they’re full of water.

The cobra opens him wider still and he’s sure he’s drowning. But it’s not water now, it’s flames that rise up red hot, his insides feeling like they’re melting and pouring out as the snake covers him.

“Who do you serve?!” echoes around him as the red is overtaken by black and all he sees are black flames with the snake towering over him writhing on top of him, in him, those bonds intractable. He doesn’t know who he serves... if he should serve someone but he feels that fire hotter and hotter until even the little snakes burn away to ask then scattered dust, leaving just him and the Cobra God of the underworld- the dragon and... and he clings to it, to that lifeline, to the only thing in the room that doesn’t burn. Oh... that’s right. He doesn’t know why he didn’t realize it before. His master is right here. His master is... in him...

“You,” he says, realizing that he can move again, the scales beneath his fingers hard like stone. He clings harder as it pulls him closer until he thinks his fingers will break against it. In deeper. Oh... oh that’s his... “You...” Parmak says louder as the snake drives into him deeper with a demand that he say it again. “You...” Deeper. “You...” Harder. “You!” Guls he can’t... “You! You!” Until he’s screaming it raw and the snake is everywhere inside him until he overflows and the fires roar around them both devouring them, burning away his skin, his lungs, the pain the sweetest most blissful thing that he’s ever felt in his life.

 

_“Who do you belong to?”_

You... You harder, please harder please so good so good

_“Will you serve me? So that I can give you what you want doctor?”_

Yes... yes anything anything don’t stop how are you so...

_“Good. I knew that you’d come around doctor.”_

Always... always... please... please let me come

_“Such a shame. Strong in the body but weak in the spirit.”_

I’m sorry I’ll be better I’ll be everything I’ll be yours I’ll save them all but I need to... I need to...

_“The report can wait, Garak, you can see that I’m busy.”_

Garak?

 

The interrogator, Elim Garak lingers in the doorway just a moment, watching the frozen doctor where he remains kneeling on the sofa, breathing hard, eyes locked to Tain’s, his mouth moving slowly, softly, in a trance. It’s the induced illusion practiced by its greatest master and it’s always been a wonder to behold in practice; especially when Tain has a pretty new toy.

 

...His father always did have good taste.


End file.
